SuperMarkets

Most places key off the phone number, and you don't need the actual card, you can enter the number into the keypad/POS card swiper.

I picked a phone number at random from where I live ( not my own ) and sure enough, it was a registered phone number in their system.

So I get the discounts, and they track it as somebody else.   

-Chris 

I love grocery shopping.  Especially Central Market or Whole Foods.  Probably related to my love of food

Those loyalty cards are like gold to marketers--I work in advertising and we would looooove to have something like that for our client, but most of the time it is like pulling teeth trying to get even a phone number or address out of a customer at the cash register.  Works for grocery stores somehow.  That is another reason in-store-rebates are so popular--you have to fill out all the personal info to get the rebate.  Then some number crunchers take your age/income/address/education/etc and analyze it to death to try to figure out what our customers are like and figure out what else they might like.

It's pretty fun, but hard information to get.

just go to Walmart and get the low prices and forget the cards. 

of course, don't buy your milk there

I shop at WholeFoods primarily, so I don't have to worry about the whole "membership" thing.

One thing that is starting to bug me is the supermarkets that offer the "Self-service checkouts".  I mean, really, why is it MY responsibility to ring up my order and then bag it myself.  At least give me a discount for doing the work your workers are paid to do.

hey, I like those things.  So much faster when I'm buying two or three items.  Unfortunatly I always get stuck behind the person trying to buy $40 in pampers with $1 bills while manhandling two screeming kids. (either that or the technological wonder that is a touch screen has them baffeled beyond imagine).

I don't mind those cards so much.  They do give you nice discounts on stuff and believe it or not, the tracking they do does help them keep the store properly stocked and general prices lower.  I remember when I worked retail, we implemented a card like that and it really helped with the ordering.  Instead of seeing that we suddenly had a spike in the number of boxes of item X we sold, the inventory would see that that spike was either caused by one person buying steadily more of that item for the week (in which case we would not order more then plan) or that it was a general sales trend (in which case we would increase how much we were ordering).